You know those bananas that you keep avoiding in the fruit bowl? The ones which got a bit speckled a few days ago and now are fully fledged brown? Well, throw out your normal go-to recipe because my banana bread with chocolate, oats and honey is the way to go. Adding a few extra ingredients gives it a delicious flavour and texture and I have been very much enjoying having a slice for breakfast each morning. Any excuse to start the day with chocolate.
ingredients
You

Minimum fuss and maximum results were the name of the game with my most recent dessert. Another hot day, the last thing I needed was to be baking pastry, so I didn’t, but made a tart nonetheless. My Strawberry and Peanut Tart makes use of a few sneaky kitchen shortcuts to make a delicious and impressive pudding. A chocolate and peanut base smothered with cream and stacked high with fresh fruit it almost seemed a shame to cut into it. But, you know,

Adding herbs to bakes and drinks is something I really like to do. I like the botanical flavour that herbs can bring to various dishes and I think woody herbs really suit being paired with chocolate. These chocolate, thyme and lemon shortbread biscuits are a delicious combination of flavours if I do say so myself and if you're unsure about adding herbs to a biscuit you'll just have to give it a try!
Ingredients
You will need (for 12 squares):

Slicing open a blood orange has an air of anticipation about it. Will it be intense purple almost throughout, have a few red stripes or actually be mostly orange? Whichever colour you end up with they all have the same fantastic flavour. I love cooking with blood oranges; adding a splash to a cocktail or baking them into something delicious. This recipe for blood orange posset was something I had never tried before and I couldn't believe how easy

I’m not sure these Peanut Butter and Raspberry Brownies need an introduction; just the name gets my mouth watering and a hankering for a piece with a coffee shortly follows. I’ll be honest from the outset, these are not exactly what you’d call healthy. They are full fat, properly indulgent, to-hell-with-it brownies. And frankly, when you’ve been working hard all day coming home to one of these and a cuppa is like a hug for the soul. A gooey,

I do love the expression ‘fart-arsing around’. When it came to making and decorating these dark chocolate orange and pistachio biscuits I wasn’t going to be fart-arsing around with any of it. An all in one biscuit dough means it’s easy to mix and haphazard throwing around of melted chocolate makes the decoration a breeze. No dunking of biscuits in chocolate for the perfect edge, no placing of individual caramelised pistachios with tweezers

After double, these cookies could only be improved by making them triple; perhaps a drizzle or dunk of white chocolate on each. As they stand however, my Double Chocolate and Orange Cookies are just splendid as they are. Especially straight from the oven. The smell as they bake is hard to beat. I like to use dark chocolate when making cookies as sweet as these because I think it adds some welcome bitterness. When it comes to rolling the cookies, for

Part biscuit and part flapjack, these Chocolate Rolled Oat Biscuits are a doddle to make. All mixed in one bowl and baked in one dish; minimum fuss and washing up, maximum baking satisfaction. I like that these biscuits aren’t too sweet and the generous amount of oats used means they are really filling. I’m not sure if they are technically a flapjack or a biscuit though; the lack of honey or golden syrup isn’t very flapjack-y but then the oaty

I tried making a traditional Yule Log a few years ago. It was somewhat stressful. Apart from the fact that my butter is never warm enough and I always lose patience and mix it up anyway and deal with the consequential sponge that turns up the whole process is fraught with danger. The rolling up, unrolling, spreading of cream, re-rolling and hoping for no cracking then furiously patching it up with ganache, chocolate flying all over the place. It's

I like to think I’m fairly well behaved. The majority of what I eat I make myself and is somewhat healthy and well balanced. I find a place for the indulgent dishes (macaroni cheese, dauphinoise and the like) amongst the day to day soups, salads, vegetables and wholegrains. I’m by no means a saint and I think a little indulgence never hurt anyone. When I plan to make something that’s maybe a little bit ‘naughty’ I make sure I go all out.